The storage facility was filled with truck and automobile tires, and the flames leapt hungrily, black plumes twisting skyward. Heat shimmered off the asphalt, turning the air heavy and acrid, stinging her eyes and lungs.
Ms. Zaidi didn’t hesitate amid the deafening roar, hose in hand, her helmet strapped tight. The 23-year-old and the remainder of her firefighting crew — all males — aimed the jets of water on the molten rubber, which hissed and steamed beneath the torrent. The crew labored methodically, each motion exact, each second important.
Hours later, the blaze was beneath management. Nearby factories had been spared, no lives had been misplaced — although the harm bumped into tens of hundreds of {dollars} (tens of millions of Pakistani rupees). When the firefighters emerged from the smoke, their faces streaked with soot, dozens of onlookers cheered behind security traces.
Ms. Zaidi is a uncommon sight in a rustic the place girls firefighters had been principally unheard-of till 2024. Her profession — like these of different girls in Pakistan’s emergency companies — underscores the gradual inroads being made within the staunchly patriarchal and conventional Islamic nation.
Some had been impressed when Shazia Perveen turned Pakistan’s very first lady firefighter in 2010 in jap Punjab province, the place she is now a coach. In Sindh Province, the place Karachi is the capital, girls began becoming a member of firefighting companies in 2024 after getting their coaching in Punjab.
And although they nonetheless make up lower than 1% of Pakistan’s firefighters, authorities say extra girls are prone to be part of firefighting models within the coming years within the nation of 255 million.
Most Pakistani girls who go into skilled fields select careers as docs, engineers, or academics, Ms. Zaidi mentioned. She needed to indicate that “we are able to do that too.” Her Chief Fire Officer, Humayun Khan, has praised Ms. Zaidi and her feminine colleagues.
Dr. Abid Jalaluddin Shaikh, Chief of the Sindh Emergency Service, mentioned Ms. Zaidi is certainly one of 50 girls firefighters within the Province. Another 180 are in coaching as rescue divers, ambulance medics and emergency responders.
“The focus is not on breaking taboos,” he mentioned. “Now we see actual outcomes.” Ms. Zaidi graduated from the Punjab Rescue Service Academy, the place she mastered high-angle rescues that use ladders, ropes, and trolleys and sometimes contain victims trapped in skyscrapers, industrial towers or different excessive elevations, in addition to varied varieties of hearth and water emergencies.
Still, she says she feels many doubt her skill on the job. “When we arrive, folks say, ‘She’s a woman — how can she rescue anybody?’” she mentioned. “Every time we save a life, we show that ladies also can do that job.” Ms. Zaidi’s fellow firefighter, Areeba Taj, 23, recalled missions in Karachi the place she and her feminine colleagues helped save lives amid chaos and smoke.
Their supervisor, Ayesha Farooq, highlighted the distinctive strengths girls carry, particularly when victims embody girls and kids.“ By becoming a member of rescue companies, they earn respect — for themselves, and for the nation,” Ms. Farooq mentioned.
Ms. Zaidi, who grew up with seven brothers and one sister, says her motivation was easy: braveness, obligation, and religion.
“People nonetheless doubt us,” she mentioned. “But each time we go on the market, we preserve proving them unsuitable.” As the skyline above the Karachi industrial zone cleared final week, Ms. Zaidi returned together with her crew to the hearth station, prepared for the subsequent alarm.
Every day on the job, Ms. Zaidi, Taj, and their different feminine colleagues show that gender is not any barrier to bravery.
